Next Base 212 In Car Cam Review

NextBase are a UK-based electronic goods company, with in-car dash cams being its key product range. They have several on offer, with the 212 model being one of its mid ranged cams. Dash cams are on the rise, as more and more cars hit the road and, well, hit each other too! By recording your journey via video footage, it really does help with insurance claims or worse, when an accident does happen. We were excited when it landed in our office so let’s check it out.

Like I said before, the 212 is an in-car dash cam that can be mounted to your windscreen. It has the following features:

In the box is the camera itself, the mount, a very long 12v power cable, a USB cable, instructions and a handy window sticker! It should be noted that a memory card is not included, so you will need to purchase one of these on top of the cam. The mount is really neat. It’s got a suction pad which is stuck to your windscreen and then the camera slides in and clips into place. It’s magnetic and provides a very secure fixing. The power cable is 4m long and needs to be plugged into the cigarette socket in your car. It’s a very long cable so if you wanted to feed it through the dash, you have the flexibility to do so.

The camera is very small and light, but does come with a decent 2.7″ LED display, so watching playback is really easy. The camera has multiple buttons below the screen, used to control the camera, which are all push function. Navigating through the camera is very simple and there is a variety of settings and options to choose from, such as video settings like resolution and exposure, plus general settings such as time and date and parking mode.

Using the camera was very easy. Once fixed to the windscreen and plugged in, turn the camera on and hit the record button. Couple of key points to mention, the camera has a wide-angle lens, so it easily captures your entire windscreen/front of the car. The camera records in either two, three or five-minute stints, so when looking back at the footage, I had several five-minute videos. This makes it easier to view and potentially avoids the need to edit down much longer footage. Once ‘x’ amount of time has passed, the recording saves and another starts but eventually the videos will start to be overwritten. However, the camera has something called a ‘G Sensor’, which detects any sharp or unusual movements and it protects that video recording from being automatically overwritten. Handy!

Quality wise, it’s good! It’s stated video quality is HD 1080p and also records audio if desired. I wouldn’t class it in the same category as say HD TV quality, because it’s not quite there but never the less, the quality far exceeds what it needs to. There is a built-in mic so audio quality is average and assuming you get out the car after an accident, chances are it wont pick up any conversation/disagreement you may be having.

The NextBase 212 retails at just £69.99, coupled with the video quality and features it includes, this is a very good buy and I’d recommend it to anyone. It not only does the job, it exceeds it! For further info and to purchase, visit the official NextBase website.